Take Flight Robotics aims to introduce the basic concepts of unmanned aerial vehicles (quad-copters) to high school students and a few teachers, too. The program teaches students how to build and fly their very own quadcopter, as well as discussing key engineering concepts including aerospace and aerodynamics; engineering design; 3-D printing; laser cutting; mechanical and electrical systems; and computer programming.

(See page 4 of the Baltimore Sun education section)

Late in the Spring 2015 semester, three Mechanical Engineering Undergraduates attended the 8th International Conference on Ethics in Biology, Engineering & Medicine, hosted by St. Francis College of Brooklyn NY on behalf of SUNY Downstate Medical Center.  Niara Comrie (right), Lailynn Reyes (left), and Emily Canapp (not shown) presented their posters and reported back to us that an ethical and informative time was had by all. The conference had a wide range of topics for attendees to debate and discuss from the ethics of bulletproof skin and dental implants to the privacy concerns surrounding personal mobile devices and drones.

The UMBC/ME students’ poster was entitled Anticipating Future Ethical Issues in Prosthetic Devices.  Ms. Comrie, Ms. Reyes, and Ms. Canapp presented their anticipatory ethical analysis using trends in advancement and application (specific to prosthetics) to look toward potential ethical conundrums. Some of the scenarios explored touched on misuse of advanced personal medical devices or prosthetics and anticipating or preventing bad acts perpetuated using these technologies: how do we keep people from using medical tech to harm others, is it possible to do so ethically?  Another ethical concern explored was toward the other end of the access spectrum: how does society make prosthetics available to those with need but not means?

Engineers affect access to every kind of medical device: their work allows devices to be created more efficiently, more cheaply, and to evolve and change with our knowledge of materials. Engineers allow medical innovation to progress with the imaginations of the medical researchers they collaborate with, it is only appropriate to allow our imaginations to explore not only the possibilities but the dangers. It is only appropriate for us to prevent and prepare for the consequences we can foresee with analyses like that done by Ms. Comrie, Ms. Reyes, and Ms. Canapp.

UMBC CWIT alumna Dr. Katherine Gibson (http://bit.ly/1DXQa8A) will
visit on this Wednesday (4/15) to interview for a position in the
CSEE Department as a full-time lecturer.  She received her BS degree in Computer Science in 2008 and was a  member of the third class of UMBC CWIT Scholars.  She is  finishing her Ph.D. in Computer Science this Spring at the
University of Pennsylvania, where her research involves "human  interactions with non-human security systems (e.g., face  recognition, graphical passwords)".

Dr. Gibson will give a talk  from 12:00 to 1:00pm in ITE 227 and also be available to meet  with students from 3:30 to 4:00pm, also in 325b and again in the CWIT office from 5:00-5:30 PM.  

Please stop by to any or all of these events to meet Dr. Gibson and give her a BIG CWIT welcome home!